


The First Hope

by iberiandoctor (jehane)



Category: DC Extended Universe, Justice League (2017)
Genre: Alien Gender/Sexuality, Alien Heat, Aliens Made Them Do It, Anal Sex, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bottom Clark Kent, Comes Back Wrong, First Time, Get Together, Hurt/Comfort, Impregnation of the Dead Results in Resurrection, Kryptonian Biology, M/M, Mpreg, Other, Pining, Porn With Plot, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rape Recovery, Resurrecting Cock, Sex pollen affecting only one person, Tentacle Rape, Tentacles, Testicle Deep Urethral Insertion, Whump, Xeno, all the way through, what it says on the tin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-30
Updated: 2018-04-30
Packaged: 2019-04-20 15:03:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14263626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jehane/pseuds/iberiandoctor
Summary: Post-resurrection, the Last Son of Krypton is forced to carry its First Hope. Bruce is the last person he wants, and may be the one person he needs.





	The First Hope

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ciliegio](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ciliegio/gifts).



> So many thanks to betas Navaan and Prinz!
> 
> Very Large Content Warnings for tentacle rape and resurrecting cock and mpreg, and associated potentially triggering conduct, written to the recip's specific prompts. Please heed tags!

Bruce ordinarily enjoyed the morning view from his office. It wasn’t his preferred time of day, but he usually liked looking through the double-glazed panoramic windows at Gotham’s Diamond District as it stretched out beneath Wayne Tower — a shining testament to his family’s legacy. 

Today, though, running on precisely zero sleep, that legacy rang hollow. The too-bright sun felt like a bullet speeding its way in slow motion capture through his skull, and this time there was no Superman there to stop it.

The newspaper headlines that gazed up from his desk were the same as the ones Alfred had placed on his breakfast tray. 

CALLS FOR ROUBLE/EURO CURRENCY PEG MISGUIDED, the Financial Times suggested. The Washington Herald’s CAPITAL HILL CONTROVERSY OVER SENATOR FLYNN MEMORIAL headline was accompanied by photographs of sign-waving protestors.

And on the front page of the Daily Planet: GOTHAM MAN SAVED FROM BURNING BUILDING — SUPERMAN COPYCAT?

Jimmy Olsen had managed to get an interview from the victim’s hospital bed. He’d transcribed that first-hand account: the classic rescue, the unfailing politeness, the steely blue gaze that could have only belonged to one person.

Alfred didn’t say anything when Bruce pushed the tray away. But his pointed look was as clear as day: _You can't hide this forever._

“Watch me,” Bruce had muttered. After all, hiding was what he did in his other day job, and he’d been doing it successfully for longer than Alfred liked to admit.

  
  
  
  


After a lukewarm lunch and too much paperwork, it was time to visit the building site. 

STAR Enterprises was doing a bang-up job in restoring Wayne Manor — three and a half weeks in and they were actually ahead of schedule. They’d kept much of the old façade, but included modern windows and panels to let in as much light, and the new millennium, as possible. They’d also installed the reinforced super-structures and fiber-optic cabling and perimeter defenses that Bruce had designed. Admittedly, Vic had done most of the heavy lifting — it would be a crime not to make full use of the cybernetic technopath currently on their team roster.

Bruce walked through the refurbished steel-and-stone hallways that he remembered from his boyhood. His steps led him into the vaulted central chamber with its stately round table and the six tall chairs. Six chairs, one for each of them — including for _him_.

There was no warning, just a gust of wind, and then the kid appeared out of thin air.

“…Bruce! Hey, man! How’s it going?” 

“Barry,” Bruce said. It came out more exasperated than usual; perhaps he was more tired than he realized. “Slow day at the crime lab?”

“It’s my day off! Thought I’d drop by, see how the Hall of Justice is coming along? Do a few laps with my guys, find out maybe if we got a new case?” Barry zipped into the chair marked with a lightning bolt, and ripped open a bag of Doritos that he didn’t have a minute ago.

Bruce suppressed a sigh. “That’s not how the League’s supposed to work. You don’t hang around here like it’s some fraternity house. If you’re needed, we’ll know where to get hold of you.”

“Oh.” Barry deflated a little, then perked up again: “Is it okay if I do laps with Vic and Diana at their places, then? Cause I have totally been doing that. With Arthur, too, and he didn’t actually let me drown that one time, either!” 

Bruce tried hard to keep his tone casual, and thought he’d done a reasonable job of it, given how tired he was. “You’ve seen Diana? Recently?” 

“Yeah! We had dinner the other night at her place. Great skyline! Vic said he could see the nebula from her balcony…” Barry trailed off, at Bruce’s pointed look. “I don’t get why she’s still not talking to you, though. I mean, it was all of us who agreed to bring him back, not just you.”

“It was my idea,” Bruce muttered. Which meant it was his job to clean up this mess, not anyone else’s.

Barry got up and walked over. Bruce shut his eyes, so he wouldn’t have to look at a close-up of the kid’s sympathetic expression. “It’s not your fault, man. Nobody could have guessed, not even Diana.”

Bruce made a noncommittal sound. The headache was getting worse. And it would soon be evening, which meant he needed to get back to the cave before Clark woke up.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


He woke slowly, a return to notions of self that he had almost forgotten. As if he had been drifting on the bottom of the continental shelf for millennia, his molecules scattered across the widest reaches of the galaxy. Then, out of the void, had come a bolt of lightning, a blast of pure energy — and he was surfacing from the ocean trenches like a ghostly amphipod, raining down upon the Earth like light.

He remembered his body. Remembered gender, remembered maleness, or what passed for maleness on the world of his birth. Remembered how that world had been lost, and how the hope sheltered in the scout ship from his homeworld had been lost all over again — its precious cargo of genetic material, its embryonic Kryptonian sons and daughters, destroyed during that desperate battle against Zod over Metropolis.

Slowly, he realized where he was. 

On that scout ship. In the genesis chamber. Under water.

The cold seep of the Western Pacific would not have been as frigid. The dead spaces in the Hadalpelagic Zone would not have caused this pressure that held him in place, immobile, utterly helpless.

For untold weeks and months, his body had been away from the sun. Its cells had been drained of all life and power. His limbs were weightless. He couldn’t even move his eyelashes or twitch his fingers, let alone cry out.

_Systems steady at 0.19 per cent. Cargo status: foreign genetic material incorporated. Single load viable. Load sequence: second phase complete._

The same energy that had awakened him had also awakened the ship. It was speaking. After too long, he realized he could understand the words.

 _Cargo status: continuing viable,_ it was saying, so softly only he could hear. _Codex viable. Initiating third phase._

Slowly, gradually, horrifically, he realized what was happening.

His body was submerged in the depths of the genesis chamber, held face-up and cruciform against the craggy floor. Above him, he could see the surface of the pool, and something rippling and red that had been spread across that surface, blocking out his view of the world above. 

His heart was pounding fiercely, but he had no strength to move, let alone to fight himself free.

His naked body was secured by fleshy organic tendrils generated by the chamber. Something thick and spongy was stuffed down his throat, other tendrils wound themselves around his neck and chest and limbs, keeping his arms and legs spread-eagled. Still other coils had looped themselves around his hips, gripping his thighs and his maleness and spreading the globes of his ass. 

And there was something else, something enormous and impossibly long, that had breached the rim of muscles around his anus and had speared itself into his hole. 

The thing had already worked its way deep inside, forcing his body open mercilessly, violating it. Violating _him_ , and he was powerless to stop it.

He was being split apart. Something new was swelling inside him, just above his bladder, his other organs shifting to make room for it, and he couldn’t so much as cry out.

_Third phase complete. Initiating final phase._

His over-stuffed mouth and jaw were aching badly; he was being penetrated everywhere, all the way through. Tentacles slid around his shaft, suckers digging in and then releasing; a slender tendril pried itself into the meaty opening of his cockhead. The phallic thing in his ass dragged against his inner walls, pushing past his prostate and forcing itself still deeper in, into the new organ that had just roused itself into life. 

It was excruciating, but he was growing hard anyway. His body desperately fought to free itself from this desecration — to _live_ — 

Tears gathered at the corners of his eyes. His balls ached, his cock had become painfully swollen. He could feel the intrusions throbbing lewdly inside each of his openings — and then strange, thick fluid spurted out of each of them, gushing down his throat and into his sex and his ass and his abdomen. It went on and on as he began to choke and splutter helplessly, filling his body in an obscene flood. 

Readying him, against his will, to be used. As a vessel.

 _Load sequence complete. Load viable. Codex viable._

He had no way to tell how long it took — if it had been long, agonizing minutes, or mere seconds. He didn’t know if he’d blacked out, during; or if he’d been unconscious throughout, and had just dreamed that the genesis chamber had sprouted tentacles that had held him down and had _forced_ him — 

_Systems powering down._

There was no way to tell how long he’d been in the ship. Or, before that, how long he had been dead. 

All he knew was this: he had come back to himself — deathly cold, shivering uncontrollably and sick to his stomach, red birth blanket wrapped around his nakedness — under open skies, in Metropolis, in the bright morning. 

The Earth’s yellow sun swept into his cells and filled him with warmth and power and the life he remembered.

And with him was the Batman. Holding him in his arms, bringing him out into the light.

  
  
  
  


Clark woke again, for real this time. He wasn’t cold anymore; rather, he burned with fever. It was night, instead of the morning he remembered. For a moment, he didn’t know where he was.

The red blanket was familiar, though, as were the arms which held him.

“Bruce?”

This was the gravelly voice he heard in his dreams: “Yeah. You’re alive. You’re in the Cave. You’re safe.”

Clark exhaled unevenly. His heart was hammering in his chest, he couldn’t stop trembling. A barrage of recent memories surfaced, and he grabbed at the most urgent one. “Steppenwolf?” he asked, shakily.

“Steppenwolf’s gone. The League defeated him, thanks to you. The world’s safe again.”

“Yes. I remember now.” The memories slotted back into place — the team, Chernobyl, the battle — as well as what had happened afterwards. Those later memories filled him with shame, as they always did, accompanied with searing, miserable heat. 

It was a heat he felt now, sitting on a cot in the Batcave, letting Bruce hold him and comfort him, even though Clark wasn’t the same man he’d been before his return. _This_ Clark had become so depraved that he’d get turned on even by the smell of his friend’s skin, by the resonant drum of Bruce’s pulse and the changing color of his gray eyes. When he was alone, this Clark would touch himself, humiliatingly and often, and it wouldn’t bring him any relief. 

This Clark couldn’t stop thinking about Bruce all the time — in the days when he wasn’t there, and in the nights like this one, when he was.

Bruce had brought him back from the dead. It wasn’t as if he wasn’t grateful. 

It absolutely wasn’t Bruce’s fault that the gestation chamber had loaded its last salvaged Kryptonian embryo into Clark to host. Or that the implantation would somehow make him sick with desire — for anything that moved, it seemed like, even for Bruce himself. 

Superman couldn’t be trusted to be around humans for as long as this gestation lasted. Clark couldn’t, either — not his mom, not Lois, not even the League. There was only one person he could trust with this secret, the only person strong enough to deal with everything this meant.

Clark sat up, stiffly. As always, pulling himself out of Bruce’s arms felt like a physical blow.

“How are you feeling?”

“Same old, same old.” 

What Clark felt was _weak_ , from his long days spent in the bunker that Bruce had rigged with radiation-blocking lead shields. Weak was definitely a good thing. He needed to stay away from as much sunlight as he could. 

Bruce’s gaze was steady under the flickering lights of the shields. “By the way. Today’s Daily Planet picked up the story about your little jaunt downtown.”

“Ah, heck.” Clark tried to lighten the mood: “I didn’t think that guy would recognize me wearing Bruce Wayne’s pajamas.”

Bruce rolled his eyes. “You need to be more careful. After Chernobyl, there's been even more talk about Superman's return. These random sightings are just going to fuel the rumors.”

“Of course I’m trying to lie low,” Clark said, “but if I can hear a building burning, I’m never not going to be there.”

Bruce sighed, then he patted Clark awkwardly on the shoulder. A treacherous jolt of heat flared through Clark’s body; he had to choke back a small sound of want. 

“How’s the, you know?”

Clark couldn’t suppress the shudder. He could feel it along the edges of his enhanced senses — a tiny, egg-like cloud of DNA from a lost civilization, curled like a frond in its host’s womb. He could almost feel the little cells dividing inside him. 

“We may have to revise our timeline. It’s growing faster than we figured, maybe twice as fast as in humans. It could be done in another four months.”

Bruce said, the set of his mouth unreadable, “Then I’ll just need to work faster, won’t I?”

Clark had no answer to this. Bruce had STAR Labs trying to find a way to use the Mother Box to restart the chamber, while he and Dr. Stone were working on a Kryptonite-based scalpel. Somehow they also needed to design a ground-breaking obstetric procedure that could transfer a fetus from its live Kryptonian host to an artificial amniotic surrogate. The man didn't have enough time to sleep as it was.

Finally, he said, “We may have to face the facts, Bruce. I might be like this for the next four months, until the birth.”

Bruce winced, an involuntary twitch that Clark didn’t know how to interpret. “Not if I can help it,” he said, grimly. “I promised you that I would fix this, and I’m going do exactly that.”

Clark was getting used to ignoring the heated flares of shame. Of course Bruce would be so revolted by Clark’s condition that he would do anything in order to remedy it.

His traitorous body ached for Bruce to touch him again, to hold him, as Bruce dutifully held on to him each night when Clark woke from the same nightmare. Clark knew Bruce only embraced him in order to keep him from going to pieces, and tearing a hole in the bunker with his bare hands — which he could probably still do, even in his weakened state. Bruce would never want what Clark’s gestational hormones burned for him to do — which was to touch Clark lovingly, to kiss his mouth, to turn him face down on the cot and fuck him urgently until Clark’s desperate, miserable hunger was sated at last.

Bruce said, briskly, “I’m headed to the lab. Why don’t you go sit by the window for half an hour? There’s enough of a moon tonight for you to get your dose of rays.”

Clark knew that was good advice, for both of them. He took his unique cargo to the skylight beyond the bunker shields. 

The moon was partly obscured by Gotham’s pervasive cloud cover, but it was visible — remote and white, and a million miles out of reach.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


Bruce was aware that he was dreaming. It didn’t help. 

Once again, he walked down the gangway that led to the gestation pool. In his arms was the body of the last son of an alien civilization; the last hope of the Earth. The friend whose death he had been responsible for as surely as if he’d ripped the man’s heart out himself. 

The crushing weight of it almost made his knees buckle, even in the dream.

Martha had dressed Clark’s body in a navy suit, and wrapped him in the red and gold blanket they’d found him in as a baby. His face was serene, as much of an ancient, ageless god in death as he’d been in life. He looked finally at peace, and as if he forgave Bruce for every mistake Bruce had ever made. 

Bruce waded awkwardly with the body into the amber water. The team was ready — Vic standing by with the Mother Box, Barry and Arthur poised to jumpstart the systems with electricity.

He didn’t remember the pool being this deep. Surely the water had only come up to his chest? But in the dream, he took one step forward, and then another, letting the amniotic water share the weight of Clark’s body, and then he plunged in over his head.

Klaxons went off around him. Organic tendrils exploded from the rocky bottom of the pool, lashing around him with prehensile strength. Clark’s body was snatched from him, the way it had been that terrible night. 

Bruce had cried out, and a tentacle raked across his cheek, flaying through the cowl and drawing blood. He could feel the waters of the pool starting to dissolve the armor of his uniform. He needed to get out of the pool, but escaping without Clark was not an option. 

As he reached frantically into the waters, he heard the others putting the plan into action, felt the energy field descend, and then the chamber was forming words. 

_Systems back online,_ it said. _Foreign genetic material detected. Codex detected: status null. Cargo status: null._

Then: _Correction. Cargo status: single load potentially viable. Codex: potentially viable._

 _Initiating preservation sequence. Initiating splicing._

In the dream, Bruce was now painfully aware what these words meant. He couldn’t do a thing about it, though, the same way as he’d been helpless on that day itself, searching frantically in the water until his lungs were cracking from lack of oxygen. 

Just as the others realized what was happening, just as Arthur and Diana dived in to assist, the gestation pool churned violently, and Clark was expelled from its murky depths. 

The suit had melted off him; he was naked. There were purpling bruises all along his body. His bare skin was the color of death. But his chest was rising and falling with shallow breath, and tears had collected in the corners of his eyes.

He was alive.

Clark’s need overrode considerations of secrecy. Bruce wrapped the red blanket around the abused body and lifted him out of the pool. He didn’t stop until he’d gotten Clark to the surface, and out into the sun. 

  
  
  
  


Bruce awakened with a violent jerk. His bedroom was flooded with midday sunlight. He’d managed to get to bed after Clark had finally gone to sleep, but it hadn’t helped — the splitting headache was still there.

The guilt, too: that was still there. Together with something else that Bruce usually had a better grip on.

These days, the playboy reputation was almost entirely a cover. Bruce hadn’t been on a real date in months, unless you counted the occasional quality time he had with his hand. Maybe that was why he was so uncharacteristically horny.

Hell, who was he kidding. He was a man whose childhood had been shaped by guilt, who now got his kicks by fighting crime and wearing leather. For him, guilt and desire went hand in hand.

He’d gotten Clark killed, and then he’d had the crazy idea to fetch Clark's body out of the ground. He’d brought the Mother Box to the scout ship, and the ship had used it to bring Clark, and someone who wasn’t Clark, back to life in a two-for-one deal he should have foreseen. 

At first, stupidly, he hadn’t realized what had happened, and Clark, shaking and pale, hadn’t told him. He’d let Clark help them fight Steppenwolf even though Clark could barely stand up straight. 

He’d only realized something was terribly wrong in the aftermath of battle, when Clark had taken hold of him and kissed him.

 _I’m sorry,_ Clark had told him, mouth swollen and red. He clutched the front of Bruce’s uniform with hands that could easily have broken him in two. _This isn’t me. The chamber — it put something inside me. Something alive._

It had taken a while for Bruce to understand what Clark was trying to tell him. He had never been kissed like that by anyone, let alone by Clark — forcible and hungry, like Clark wanted to devour him, and Clark was a metahuman who actually could. 

It should have made him furious, or horrified. Instead he’d gotten more aroused than he’d been in years. 

_Get a grip,_ he’d told himself. _Put your dick back in your Batsuit. You did this to him; he can’t help himself._

What he told Clark was: _I’m going to fix this._

Thus far, he hadn’t been doing a very good job of it. 

There weren’t any Kryptonian obstetricians left to consult on a live gestation. From what Dr. Stone could ascertain from the scout ship, and the memories left to Clark by the Codex, Kryptonians had been using gestational chambers to birth their babies for so long that their uteruses had become dormant. 

Everyone had assumed all the embryos loaded into the scout ship had been destroyed in the first fight against Zod. They’d been mistaken. Somehow one embryo had survived, or had been brought to life by the Mother Box; for some reason the powered-down gestational chamber had decided to load it into the nearest live Kryptonian host for it to gestate in the old fashioned way. 

Bruce was no closer to determining the reasons for this decision, let alone how to have the thing delivered back to the chamber where it belonged, without harming either host or the rapidly growing fetus.

Of course, Clark wouldn’t hear of anything that would harm the fetus. Since his return, he’d been strung out on enough gestational hormones for an entire planet of expectant hosts — after all, he was carrying the first child Krypton had seen in a generation, with all those lost genes and all those first hopes resting on his recently re-generated womb. 

The hormones were also making Clark hornier than all of Gotham’s adolescents put together. Bruce knew he shouldn’t let it affect him — his friend was so hormonal he would turn to anything with a pulse, and Bruce happened to be the only person around right now.

It felt wrong, as if Bruce was taking advantage of Clark’s condition for his own perverted ends. But Bruce couldn’t resist. The memory of Clark’s sweat-damp skin, the weeks Clark spent in the small camp bed in his bunker, helpless and dependent on him, the feel of that powerful, muscular body trembling in his arms — Bruce couldn’t stop himself from taking himself in hand, and jacking himself painfully until he came, pressing his free hand to his mouth to keep from crying out.

Afterwards, he always wondered if Clark could smell it on him. It didn’t shame him enough to stop, though.

He decided to skip today’s papers and breakfast, and to move straight on to the boozy lunch his headache deserved.

“I plan on serving water at today’s luncheon, Master Bruce,” Alfred said. His butler looked uncharacteristically perturbed. “For it seems you may be graced by the company of a lady.”

Bruce was glad he’d taken the time to shave properly when Diana stepped into the dining room. She gave him a neutral look, and then her eyes grew concerned, despite the efforts Bruce had made to dress for her.

“Barry said you weren’t doing so well. For once, I can see what he meant.”

Bruce shrugged. “That makes one of us. You look good as always. What brings you here, after all this time?”

“I came to tell you I’m sorry,” Diana said, without preamble. “I shouldn’t have stayed away. Clearly you can’t do this alone.” She sat in the chair beside him and fixed him with her bright, difficult gaze; Bruce had to look away.

"You don't need to say you told me so. I've said it to myself enough times over these last four weeks."

"Allocating blame won’t solve anything,” Diana said. “You need my help, Bruce, and so does he."

Bruce swallowed. "I did this to him, Diana. It’s my job to handle it."

"What if you can’t handle it by yourself?" Diana said it very gently. She placed her hand on the table, palm up, in a peace offering.

Bruce couldn’t bring himself to take it, and after a moment Diana took her hand away. Her eyes were filled with complex sadness and an even more complex understanding. 

"Can I see him, at least?"

For a moment, Bruce was tempted. It would be sheer relief to share this burden with someone. Then he thought about how Clark would hate for Diana to see him out of control, and inflamed with lust. How Clark would be terrified that he’d disgust her, or worse, be terrified that he might attack her. 

"Give us another week, and then when I’m out of ideas, maybe you can try."

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


The days had gotten shorter, the nights longer. Sometimes Clark couldn’t tell where he was, or what time it was, or whether he was awake or asleep. There were cells dividing in his womb, sparks of life jumping through the tiny synapses, genetic helixes spiraling inside him that were similar to his own and were at the same time immeasurably different. 

Clark’s body was a chamber of fierce heat, a vessel for precious cargo, attuned to its tiny, flickering, pulsing life. In these last days his brain seemed to become attuned to it as well, to its small, cloudy dreams and growing personhood.

 _Who are you,_ Clark wondered. It looked like they shared DNA; perhaps that was why the scout ship decided Clark would be a viable carrier. Perhaps this was another child of Jor-El, or a great-nephew to Lara. 

All the embryos had been lost in the battle with Zod. The few that hadn’t been destroyed outright had been so badly compromised they weren’t usable, their genetic matrices irretrievably damaged. Bruce’s current theory was that the chamber had harvested DNA from Clark himself to replace the missing genetic material, and to restore the embryo to viability. But Clark had been dead; he wasn’t sure his DNA would have been unusable, unless the Mother Box had done something to it.

Clark drifted and dreamed, his body floating on the tide of increasing hormones, his mind…

  
  
  
  


…The massive surge of energy, rocking through the ship, bringing it back online. Rocking through _him_ , blasting him from the sky, unearthing him from the deep.

_Systems online at 0.21 per cent. Single cargo: potentially viable. Preservation sequence continuing. Splicing continuing._

His body was cold and lifeless at the bottom of the gestation pool, held impersonally by organic tendrils. The waters were melting through his suit as if it were tissue paper, leaving his body bare. 

_Single cargo online. Foreign material incorporated._

Directly above him was a pod that held a single embryo, pierced by a beam of light coming from deep within the chamber. The pod was spinning, enveloped in red, oxygenated, human blood. Blood that wasn’t his.

_Splicing complete. Cargo status: viable._

Someone else had gone into the water with him.

 _Codex: potentially viable. Commencing loading sequence: initiating first phase._

The organic coils tightened around his torso and limbs. One tendril snaked its way down his throat, others drew his thighs and asscheeks apart, and yet another, thicker tendril emerged, one that emitted a slick, lubricating substance, and that worked his lifeless body open. His muscles were slack and unresponsive, but the tight ring of his anus yielded to the unrelenting thrusts, and the walls of his passage gave admission to the intruder.

The thick tendril thrust on inward, and upward, pushing past his prostate gland and through his rectum. At the join of his small intestine, it paused. There was a hidden valve in that fork of his passage, that led to a forgotten place where, generations before, his ancestors could have received and hosted a growing life. 

A different fluid was secreted, a genetic switch was triggered, and the vestigial organ that had been lying dormant began to swell.

The tendril withdrew, and another took its place. This second tendril bore the pod that housed the embryo.

_Cargo status, stable. First phase continuing._

The tendril forced its way into the limp body, into the new-grown womb. And then it expelled the embryo — the viable, repaired, living embryo, with its new half-human cells and its sudden, electric spark of life.

The ancient bodily pathways lit up in a fierce, responsive blaze. Nerves flared in the anguish of awakening, tormented passages cried out at the violation — and the invading new life, burrowing deeply into the fleshy walls of the rediscovered womb, also jolted its host back to sudden, agonizing life. 

_Codex viable_ , the ship said, impersonally. _Initiating second phase._

  
  
  
  


Gasping, fighting, thrashing — Clark struggled his way to the surface, and realized he was lying on the floor of the bunker, surrounded by mattress ticking and plywood. This time, he’d managed to break his bed.

Looked like this time, he’d managed to give Bruce a black eye, too. 

The man was still holding on, though, like grim death. His arms folded around Clark as if he could block out the entire world. Clark looked into his determined face, saw the bruise around Bruce’s right eye, and below it, the sticking plaster that had been there before Chernobyl, and then he knew. 

“It’s you,” Clark spluttered. “The ship used you.”

Bruce ignored him, as if Clark was ranting feverishly; Clark supposed he couldn’t blame him. The smell of guilt curled off Bruce’s unwashed skin and filled Clark with an arousal that he finally understood.

“Clark? You with us?”

“I’m here,” Clark said. “I’m awake.” And he _was_ , finally, in all senses of the word: his brain synapses firing at last, hyperaware of the sweat soaking through his pajamas and sticking damply to Bruce’s body. Of the pulse of life under his ribcage, inside his womb. “The chamber used your blood, your DNA, when you came with me into the water. Half of _him_ , it’s from you.”

Bruce’s eyes widened. To his credit, he didn’t automatically tell Clark he was crazy, though Clark knew Bruce absolutely wanted to. 

“How do you know?”

Clark swallowed. The sound of Bruce’s pulse was deafening him and turning him on in equal measure, mirroring the throb of blood through his hardening cock. “The embryo showed me.” He paused. “Another week and he’ll be big enough for some scans, but I now have a good enough sense of what’s going on inside him.”

“Holy fuck,” Bruce said, with feeling. Then the thought struck him. “Is this why you — and I —?”

Clark put his hand against Bruce’s chest, and the touch made him shudder with want. It seemed to affect Bruce too, for some reason. ”That’s the working theory. It was always you, Bruce. Nobody else was in any danger.”

Which, of course, meant —

“— I have to get out of here,” Clark muttered, scrambling to his feet. His hands were shaking, his dick was leaking and rock-hard under his — Bruce’s — loose pajama bottoms, he couldn’t be trusted not to —

“Clark,” Bruce said urgently, and caught hold of Clark’s forearm; Clark was still weak enough that Bruce’s grip almost hurt. “Don’t. Let me help you.”

“Are you kidding? I’m not in control, I could hurt you! I just did,” and, rather than rushing away like he should have done, Clark stopped to stroke Bruce’s bruised face.

“Let me worry about that,” Bruce said, and pulled Clark down to him and kissed him.

Clark couldn’t remember much about their first kiss. He’d been nearly out of his mind in Chernobyl — he’d had to fight a world menace after months in the ground, and when that was over, he had been gripped with the realization that something was growing inside him, and by overwhelming new feelings of lust. Bruce had been horrified, and Clark had been horrified at himself.

This second kiss — Clark couldn’t understand it, but Bruce didn’t seem horrified now. Instead, he cupped Clark’s face with as much gentleness as a man like the Batman could muster, and kissed his lips in a slow, willing, open-mouthed kiss that made Clark’s toes curl. 

“Good?” Bruce asked, eventually. He was breathing unevenly. Clark didn’t need to breathe himself, but he felt light-headed anyway. 

“Too good,” he said, honestly. All his cells seemed to have lit up with need, he wasn’t sure how long it would be before he’d have to touch himself, or explode, or start begging Bruce to fuck him. “You sure about this? This baby’s making me crazy, I can’t keep ahold of myself around you.”

“You don’t need to keep hold of yourself, Kal,” Bruce said. He undid Clark’s pajama bottoms, and took Clark’s engorged cock in his big hand.

It was shockingly good. Clark heard himself groan, head falling back against the sweat-soaked sheets, felt himself thrust up, helpless and leaking, into Bruce’s expert grasp. Bruce worked him over in long, full-handed strokes, fingers tight and cool against Clark’s superheated length, as if he’d spent his nights watching Clark touch himself in exactly this way. As if he’d dreamed of touching Clark in exactly this way.

“Bruce — God —“ 

_You need to be sure,_ Clark tried to say, but the rest was lost in a wordless moan — Bruce twisted his wrist, and Clark was hurtling over the edge like a man who'd forgotten how to fly. As the fierce blaze of his orgasm rushed up to meet him, he arched off the wrecked mattress and emptied himself in shuddering spurts of white.

He returned to himself with the strength of the Batman wrapped around him, a comfort like nothing else. 

Bruce’s muscles coiled with tension. Clark could feel how fast Bruce’s heart was pounding, could smell the badly concealed hunger. He didn’t need enhanced senses to see the hard rod of Bruce’s erection under that uniform or know how helplessly aroused Bruce had gotten. 

Clark couldn’t believe it. He’d been afraid that the hand-job was just another way for Bruce to exorcise his guilt; he never thought it could mean something else. After all, it was one thing for Clark to be drawn to Bruce — and maybe that part wasn’t totally up to Clark, though he wasn’t going to second-guess it now — but another to discover that Bruce might actually feel the same way, without any help from hormones or scout ships or birthing chambers. 

“Now, I need to get you somewhere else to sleep,” Bruce muttered. That heavy note of guilt was back in Bruce’s voice, and Clark realized he needed to act fast before the Batman’s brand of self-denial shut this down for good.

“New plan: let’s take this to Bruce Wayne’s bed.”

Bruce was silent for a long moment. He was smart enough to figure that Clark could now tell how badly Bruce wanted him, and principled enough that he’d try to dissuade Clark regardless. “ _Not_ a good plan. You said it yourself, you’re not thinking straight.”

“I’m thinking straighter than I’ve been since I’ve been back. I need you. I’ve needed you for weeks.” 

Bruce looked wracked with indecision, and Clark hastened to add, “It’s not the hormones. Or, not just the hormones. You brought me back, you protected me, you were the one I trusted.”

Clark put his hand on the Batman’s weapon, and felt his own spent cock throb with interest, rousing once again with proximity to the fetus’s other genetic parent. There was only one way to satiate it. 

“You said you’d fix things? This will fix things. Take me to bed, Bruce.”

Bruce groaned, low in his throat, and then he lifted Clark into his arms, in the same way as he’d carried him from the birthing chamber into the morning light.

  
  
  
  


Bruce Wayne’s master bedroom was unshielded. Moonlight streamed in through the long French windows, filling Clark’s body with reflected power and restoring him to his full strength. Clark bit back the temptation to throw open the windows and take to the air — Gotham wasn’t ready for the sight of a butt-naked Superman soaring across their skyline at night. 

Besides, he had more urgent matters to deal with, like Batman stripping nude with military precision. In the moonlight, Bruce Wayne was all scars and uncompromising muscle, and he was the most beautiful thing in Clark’s resurrected life.

Bruce noticed Clark’s appreciative look, and lifted a self-deprecating eyebrow. “How, exactly, will this fix things?”

“It’ll fix _this_ ,” Clark said, and climbed into Bruce’s bed, and took hold of Bruce’s flushed, swollen dick.

A fierce spasm ran through Bruce as he let Clark caress him. He closed his eyes, as if he knew what a mistake this was, and still wanted it too much to stop him. “Fuck,” he said, his voice shaking, “and here I figured you were such a Boy Scout that you’d never touched a man in your life.”

“I’ve never had a man, but it doesn’t mean I never wanted one.” Clark kissed him, their third kiss, full of teeth and pressure and rising need. He had to break the kiss after Bruce flipped him onto his back and pressed his erection against Clark’s. When Clark got his breath back, he said, “Come on, Bruce, I need this. Show me.”

“This is going to kill me,” murmured Bruce, when he got a hand between Clark's asscheeks and discovered that Clark’s hole was slick and ready for him, the Codex preparing Clark for his lover. Clark couldn’t say he’d expected this, but he wasn’t going to reject an unanticipated gift. Instead, he settled for spreading himself with his hands and lifting his hips to Bruce.

Bruce made a small sound of surrender. Then he took hold of Clark’s thighs and shifted his weight forward, and slid himself into Clark’s dripping hole. 

Bruce’s member was as girthy and hard as the ship’s tentacles had been, but the resemblance stopped there. That had been a fierce violation that Clark had nightmares about, an act which had made him terrified of the man he’d become. This was completely different — his friend and benefactor was finally giving in to his feelings, giving Clark what he wanted, and making Clark feel whole again.

Bruce Wayne had undoubtedly had more lovers than most of the people in Gotham had put together. If the gutter press were to be believed, he was the kind of man more used to receiving than giving. But for some reason, on this night, Clark could almost believe he was the only man Bruce had ever welcomed into his bed.

With his powers back in full force, Clark could read the tremors in Bruce’s synapses and eyelids — the flutter of breath in his lungs, the pulse of the deep veins and the capillaries in his muscles and his heart and his engorged cock. Nobody else could tell, but Bruce Wayne was as overwhelmed as this farm boy from small-town Kansas. 

Bruce’s thrusts filled him, deep and unhurried; his big hands stroked Clark’s biceps reassuringly, a show of gallant control. Only Clark could feel him shivering with restraint, knew what it cost him to go this slowly, when all he wanted to do was hold Clark down and fuck his gestating ass into the king-sized mattress.

Clark didn’t want this to go at all slowly. The hormones were firmly in the pilot’s seat, the haze of lust coming down like cloud cover. He rolled his hips, feeling the muscles of his hole loosen so Bruce could work himself in deeper, and he heard the small, choking sound Bruce made as his control began to fray. 

"Fuck, Clark, that’s good.”

It was good, though Clark had forgotten to breathe and didn’t have the air to tell him. _Please,_ he mouthed, and Bruce started to fuck him in earnest, pupils dilating and the blood pumping faster as he drove more and more deeply into Clark’s body. His cock battered against Clark’s over-stimulated prostate, and phosphenes raced across Clark’s vision.

“— unh! Bruce, please —“

Bruce didn’t look like he could hear him. His head was hanging between his shoulders, hair falling in his eyes. He was panting between his teeth, making no further attempts to check the sounds he was making, the small muscle fibers in his loins and abdomen clenching and releasing as he pounded into Clark again and again without restraint. 

Clark didn’t think he could come again so quickly, but the hormones had other ideas — or maybe it was the sight of Bruce, covered in sweat, moans spilling openly from his parted lips, out of control and utterly abandoned to pleasure. 

Once more this night, Clark hurtled towards the edge. This time, he wasn’t alone. There was the Batman in his arms, holding on and being held. This time, they went over together, into the abyss, and discovered they could fly.

  
  
  
  


The solar flare of orgasm took a while to dissipate. Clark leaned against Bruce’s shoulder as Bruce’s ragged breathing evened out, the roar of his heartbeat returning to its familiar metronome.

Eventually, Bruce murmured, “Good thing you didn’t break this bed too.”

"It’s a very nice bed,” Clark said, automatically. Then: “What happens now?"

Bruce shrugged. “Damned if I know. You were the one who said this would fix things.”

“It did fix things,” Clark said. He swallowed, feeling the burgeoning life under his sternum. Under his heart. “For a start, I’m growing used to the idea that I might have to carry this kid to term.”

Bruce was silent for a long moment. "I’m not giving up,” he said finally. “There has to be a way.”

Clark pressed his palm against Bruce’s chest, over the place where the Bat symbol would have stood out on his uniform. “If there is, you’ll find it. If not, it looks like I’ll be giving birth to the first hope of Krypton.”

Bruce took a deep breath. For a beat, Clark couldn’t look at his face. Then he took Clark’s hand from his chest and clasped it awkwardly.

“Whatever happens, I'll be with you."

The relief washed over Clark like a sunrise. Bruce might never entirely get over the guilt of Clark’s first death or his resurrection; Clark himself had no clue how he would feel after the boy was born, let alone how to be a parent. For now, though, they’d found a way to deal with what had happened. Maybe it wasn’t the fix either of them had expected, but at least he knew now to expect one thing — that they would face this together.

Clark held him as Bruce drifted off to sleep. After so many weeks, it was now his turn to keep watch. When Bruce woke in the morning, Clark would be there.

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Happy Smut Swap, Ciliegio! I was initially kind of unsure about how your requested tags were going to work — and then the Plot Twist just wrote itself, and brought your other very inspiring requests along for the ride ♥. I hope my Kryptonian tech and alien anatomy hand-waving works for you, together with all of the smut!


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